Color woodcut

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As a woodblock or polychrome woodcut one calls the woodcuts , where on the final trigger multiple colors can be seen.

The beginnings of the color woodcut

The color woodcut is a color image reproduction technique that was already known at the time of the early printers and in which different woodcut plates were used for different colors. In the Japanese color woodcut , the different colors are applied to the printing plate by hand .

Even in Gutenberg's time , the first attempts were made to avoid the laborious subsequent painting of woodcuts and to print directly in color. Lucas Cranach the Elder was the forerunner . Ä. and Hans Burgkmaier . Their woodcutter Jost de Negker claimed in 1512 in a letter to Emperor Maximilian to have invented the technique of the clair obscur cut , which is also based on the method of multiple printing.

Also Erhard Ratdolt , the color woodcut in contact pressure produced, distinguished himself among the printers. In 1491 he printed the various colors of the crucifixion scene in the canon sheet of his Augsburg Missal using clay plates . The process, in which a separate wooden panel had to be cut and printed for each individual color, was very costly and time-consuming and therefore remained a rarity at this time.

It is essentially an original technique in which the artist himself cuts the color plates from long wood and also brings them to the imprint himself.

An early example of a rather elaborate polychrome woodcut has come down to us through an impression of the Schöne Maria zu Regensburg by Albrecht Altdorfer , which was printed using seven different plates.

The different techniques

There are several ways to achieve a colored woodcut:

  • Printing from multiple plates. In this way, the colors can be printed next to each other or mixed, opaque and superimposed. The technical challenge of this approach is based on the fact that the printing process cannot be precisely controlled due to the drying and thus shrinking of the moistened paper. For the exact placement of the printing plates, the Kento system was developed in the Japanese color woodcut , which is also used by Western printmakers today.
  • Printing from a plate through special coloring of each individual part
  • Printing from a plate by sawing the stick into several parts, coloring them differently and reassembling them for printing. This technique, also known as puzzle printing , was used by Edvard Munch , Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , for example .
  • Use of the so-called elimination technique , in which a color is printed with a trimmed plate, the plate is processed further and a print is made again (also called lost form).
  • Printing from a drawing board and a sawed color board

For the book illustration, the woodcut was mostly printed by electroplating , i.e. from the molding of an original cliché . Was possible but, after photographic transfer the drawing as Hochätzung to reproduce, in the form of a bar or Volltonätzung or the pressure on lithographic way.

Special forms

A monochrome woodcut that is not printed in black but in brown or red is not called a color woodcut, but rather brown print, red print etc.

Gold printing is a special form . Here, an adhesive layer is transferred to the print with a plate, on which very thin gold or silver leaf is then painted.

Sometimes other materials are used for the clay plates, such as B. celluloid, pressboard , linoleum , cardboard (Bristol cardboard ), chalk cardboard ( Mäserplatten ) or lead , which are then added to the drawing board made of wood.

literature

  • Lothar Lange, The Graphic Collector , Berlin 1979
  • Hiller / Füssel: Dictionary of the book . Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt a. M., 2002, ISBN 3-465-03220-9
  • Marion Janzin / Joachim Günter: The book from the book. 5000 years of book history. Schlütersche: Hannover, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89993-805-0
  • Hans Kies: Illustration and illustrators of books for children and young people in German-speaking countries 1871–1914 . H. TH. Wenner: Osnabrück, 1992, ISBN 3-87898-329-8
  • Wolf Stadler / Peter Wiench: Lexicon of Art. Painting, architecture, sculpture , volume 6. Karl Müller Verlag: Erlangen, 1994, ISBN 3-86070-452-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ EA Seemann: Lexicon of Art , Vol. II (p.7 / 8)